Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 Analyzing Rapid Urbanization in Panchkula Using Geospatial Technology Rina1 and Rohtas Godara Received: 15 December 2015 Reviewed and Accepted: 10 January 2016 Published: 14 February 2016 Abstract Today more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas whereas in case of India it’s above thirty percent. But as per the census of 2011 the absolute increase of population is more in urban areas in comparison to rural areas. The latest census of 2011 reveals that about 55 percent of the total popula- tion of Panchkula resides in urban area which is above the national average. All this has resulted into physical expansion of the urban area. This physical urban growth is the process of transformation of land use from non-urban or rural to ur- ban use over a period of time. This physical expansion can be radial or sectoral in the periphery of an urban centre. The detection and quantification of this urban growth help urban planning for sustainable future. The present study aims to measure and quantify the urban expansion of Panchkula over a period of one dec- ade using geospatial technology and compare the attributes of urban expansion with those of growth of population. A detailed dataset for built-up areal extent for the city has been derived from an assemblage of multi-temporal(2002 and 2012) LISS III satellite imageries, survey of India Topographical Sheets, Land use map prepared by Town Planning Department and ground survey data. For processing the data ERDAS 9.0 and ArcGIS 9.3 have been used. The study reveals that the agricultural land has experienced rapid transformation and continues to coalesce in the built-up area. The maximum addition to the built-up area has been experienced in the Eastern part of the Panchkula city and along the National Highways. Keywords Urbanization; transformation: built-up: physical expansion: Spatio- temporal Rina () Rohtas Godara Department of IT, GGDSD College, Sector-32, Chandigarh, India Department of Geography, Govt. P.G. College, Panchkula, India [email protected] Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 Introduction India is one of the fastest growing economies for last two decade and urbanization is taking place at great pace in India. Keeping pace with the other developing countries, the India too have the excessive growth in population and the increasing trend towards urbanization has led to the haphazard growth of the urban centers thereby converting precious agricultural land into urban land. Today more than half of the world’s population resides in urban areas whereas in case of India it’s above thirty percent. But as per the census of 2011 the absolute increase of popu- lation is more in urban areas in comparison to rural areas. Although the share of urban population to total population seems to be low, however the growth rate of the urban population is much higher considering the growth of total population. Even the class II towns in India have registered a phenomenal increase from 102 in 1961 to 468 in 2011. About 70 per cent of the urban population lives in Class 1 cities in 2011 and thus, they have an important place in urbanization in India. Thus the pressure of continuous growing urban areas is gradually changing the sur- rounding environment and neighborhoods. All this has led to many problems such as haphazard growth of urban area, industries, utility networks and conversion of precious agricultural land into urban area. Sprawl generally refers to some type of development with impacts such as loss of agricultural land, open space, and eco- logically sensitive habitats. The common definition of urban sprawl is the spread- ing out of a city and its suburbs over more and more rural land at the periphery of an urban area involving the conversion of open space (rural land) into built-up and developed land over time (Sprawl City, 2007 .Usually sprawls take place on the urban fringe, at the edge of an urban area or along the highways and others roads. The state of Haryana while keeping pace with the growing urbanization at the na- tional level registered a decennial growth rate of 44.59 percent in 2001-2011 dec- ade thereby exhibiting a decennial growth rate above the national average. Panch- kula town which grew as a satellite town of Chandigarh is not an exception to this phenomenon of rapid urbanization. In the past couple of decades this urban centre has also witnessed phenomenal growth in urbanization. The advantage of Chandi- garh`s proximity was the underlying incentive. It is also argued that the urbanization in India is limited to just a few million plus cities (Datta, 2006). Devis Mukhhopadhyay and Zerah further highlighted that a number of small towns have also grown substantially over time. Pradhan (2012) finds that 37.2 percent of 2489 new settlements and 33.6 percent of their urban population belongs to these peripheries. Kundu and Saraswati (2012) have revealed that the rate of growth of million plus cities has come down significantly. The above discussion reveals that India is rapidly becoming urbanized. Study Area Panchkula district is located in the northern part of Haryana having a locational extent between of 32° 27' to 30°57' north longitude and 76°48' to 77° 10' east lon- gitude. It is bounded by Himachal Pradesh in the north and east, Punjab and Union Territory of Chandigarh in the west and by Ambala district in the south and south- Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 east. Panchkula district has a sub tropical continental monsoon climate where the seasons are, hot summer, cool winter, good monsoon rainfall and great variation in temperature. In winter frost sometimes occurs during December and January. The rainfall is mostly received in summer season during monsoon and also by western disturbances in winters. Morni hills constitute the highest point of the district as well as of Haryana. The Ghaggar is the only main river which originates in Hima- chal Pradesh and flows through the district upto Hanumangarh district in Raja- sthan where it dries up in the desert. It is very shallow outside of the monsoons. The other rivers of the district are Sirsa and Kaushalya, a tributary of Ghaggar. Generally the slope of the district is from north east to south west and in this direc- tion, most of the rivers/streams rainfed torrents flow down and spread much grav- els and pebbles in their beds. The soils in the district are mainly light loam, silty loam, loam, piedmont and silt clay. The underground water in the district occurs under confirmed and semi-confirmed conditions which is generally fresh and suit- able for domestic and irrigation purposes. At present there are eight towns in the district viz. Panchkula UE, Pinjore MC, Kalka MC, Raipur Rani, HMT Pinjore, Chandi Mandir, Bir Ghaggar. The on- ly Hill station in Haryana called Morni is also in this district. The origin of the name Panchkula is based on the five irrigation canals (or kuls as they were called, making it Panch Kul of five canals) that take water from the Ghaggar in the uphill section and distribute it from Nada Sahib to Mansa Devi. The district is spread over an area of 898 sq kms with a total population of 5.61 lac as per 2011 census. Database and Methodology Based on the objectives of the present study, the requisite data and information was collected and processed. Secondary data was put into service. The require- ments of a particular theme guided the selection of the data mode and its pro- cessing by using Geospatial Techniques for Change Detection. Urban growth of Panchkula City along with other towns in the district within the last 10 years is observed through geospatial technology. The change detection in urban built-up area is based on satellite imagery of LISS-III 2002 and 2012. Land use/ land cover classification is based on supervised classification. Supervised classification was performed for the land use/land cover category of built-up area through ERDAS 9.0 and Arc GIS 9.3 software is used to prepare the thematic maps and to analyze the changes during (2002 to 2012) in urban sprawl as shown in methodology chart (Fig-1). Ground truth observations were also performed to check the accuracy from Google earth and actual field visit. Toposheets at a scale of 1:50000 have been used for geo-referencing satellite imagery of study area. Census data also have been used to analyze the population growth. Services of District Town and Country Planning office were utilized regarding the spatial expansion of the towns in the district Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 . Objectives Data Acquisition Reconnaissance Image Processing Development & of Image Enhancement Classification Scheme Pre-Field Land Use Maps Land Use 2002 Land Use 2012 Ground Truth Finalization of Land Use Maps Land Use 2002 Land Use 2012 Change Detection Figure 1 Methodology Chart Change Detection Analysis: Land use/ land cover change analysis was done by computing different land use/cover categories from the year 2002 to 2012. Rela- tive Deviation (RD %) was computed as under : Journal of Water and Land use Management ISSN: 0973-9300, Volume 16, Issue 1 RD = A - B x 100 B Where: A is the area under specified land use/cover class for the year 2012. B is the area under the same land use/cover class for the year 2002.